[Reader-list] THE PEOPLE BELOW THE SURFACE

[Harwood]

THE PEOPLE BELOW THE SURFACE ---------------------------------------------------------Josephine Bosma

How to reflect upon the world? The artist collective Mongrel has developed a new tool for doing just that, a program
called Nine(9). Instead of reflecting upon the world, this relatively easy to use program reflects the world quite
literally in some ways. It was created for you and me, for the wo/man on the street so to speak. It  was made to tell
stories, personal stories or self invented histories. It could be called a virtual scrapbook, collective sketchbook or
living photo album. The difference with many other on line diaries or meeting places is that the space of Nine(9) has no
beginning or end, no top and no bottom, no fixed entry. We roam through the contents of Nine(9) like we roam our cities
or our thoughts: a different starting point, a slight variety of trajectory and the possibility of new views almost
every time. This is the world without a grand narrative, this is the world from multiple points of view.

When you enter Nine(9) and start to feel your way around you will feel a bit lost the first couple of times you visit.
All these pictures, clustered in groups of nines. Odd voids in the map.  The slowness of your movements. Not knowing
what lies ahead, or whether anything lies ahead at all. Yet there are people here, you discover. Voices, faces, views
appear. You might stumble upon familiar faces even, like I did. The faces and stories of children, friends or neighbors
start to form a personal trajectory, a storyline based upon your personal curiosity or interests. I entered Lani's
world, the world of a three year old boy who came from London to live in the Bijlmer, one of Amsterdam's most unpopular
neighborhoods. Through Lani's experiences I discovered that this unpopularity is, even to my surprise, largely based on
prejudices and racism. I saw Lani's friends and learned about the occupation of their parents, the social structures in
the Bijlmer and the state of environment there (often pleasantly small townish and green). Lani's mother Matsuko reveals
it all for you in pictures and short texts. Her space in Nine(9) is only one example though, one of many. Some stories
are personal, other people prefer to enter obscure underground art, and again others play with a combination of images,
words, short films or sounds themselves. One can imagine Nine(9) to harbor reflections on politics or philosophy as
well, which one can enter and perceive (by way of your storyline, that is) at wish. Walking or flying across the various
maps of Nine(9) one is at the same time close to and distanced from their content. Mongrel has tried to create a
structure without hierarchies, but not without power of the individual.

Nine(9) is kaleidoscopic and endless. The repeated maps of nine stories within nine images form a rhythmic visual
metamap in which all borders meet like on a globe. Or like on a giant Rubik's cube, if you will. Even if this creates a
sense of space, it can also create a feeling of claustrophobia. This is enhanced by the apparent slowness in the
navigation of the space. Yet after a while you get familiar with some of the maps and you develop a sense of where you
are and how to get somewhere else. You keep strolling past the same pictures, bumping into the same maps here and there
and you discover there is a way to make big leaps over them. Experiencing Nine(9) feels a bit contradictive at times,
more even so then you already might have experienced browsing the web. It is a strange mixture of traveling places and
meeting different people in one space. Yet where on the web the variety of form and design of the different web pages
can create huge differences in (however subconscious) valuation of individual sites, redeeming their content more or
less important depending on their either professional or clumsy appearance, Nine(9) almost entirely eradicates these
differences. Entering one's story into Nine(9) means submitting to the wish of the Nine(9) designers to present everyone
as equal, or to give everyone equal chances, in the battle for representation in a stressed attention economy. Picture
after picture, map after map, glowing like stars in a dark sky, all information in this space is presented within the
same modest frame.

Even if the visual interface, the surface, is not the most important aspect in the end, it certainly is the most
dominant in how you navigate and perceive everybody's stories in Nine(9). The first impression of Nine(9) is a visual
one: that of many, many pictures, together yet distinct. Nine(9) is in some ways like a slow movie. A film played one
image at the time, and you are the final editor.

In a documentary for Dutch broadcaster VPRO called 'the end of television as we know it' someone working for the Disney
corporation claimed that future communication would be image based, not text based. Even if this remark was mostly
wishful thinking concerning Disney's market position in the future it probably contains more truth then some of us might
care to admit. Yet already in the early 20th century people thought film, the wide distribution of moving images, would
help us return to a "pre-Babel 'great human family", that film would bring people together. It only did so in an
indirect, still faulty way. Even if Nine(9) can never be called a solution for the language  problem between peoples
(since solving that seems a utopian dream), it is a step in the right direction. There is an extra dimension to Nine(9),
something film does not have, which is its relatively easy interface and its connection to the 'street' via the Mongrel
workshops and events, in other words, it's accessability. Nine(9) was developed to demystify and unravel the world of
electronic media. Nine(9)'s sober and anti hierarchic design can create very strong and interesting social spaces
indeed. 

jesis at xs4all.nl (Josephine Bosma)

http://9.waag.org
http://9.waag.org/Info